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Does Wi-Fi Kill Trees? Dutch Report Causes Doubt

Recently, we've read a few articles stating that, according to research from Dutch scientists, Wi-Fi is bad for deciduous trees — so bad, in fact, that it's killing them in urban areas where Wi-Fi networks abound.

However, the situation isn't really so dire — not yet, at least. The question is more complicated than a simple blog headline could convey.

The research in question was commissioned by the city of Alphen aan den Rijn, a town in the western Netherlands. To learn more, you can read the abstract (Google Translate will come in handy if your Dutch is rusty) or contact the Plant Cell Biology department at Wageningen University, where the research was conducted.

Ash trees near Wi-Fi access points showed "an increasing number of damage such as cracks, bumps, discoloration and various forms of tissue necrosis" over recent years. In seeking to determine whether this damage was caused by Wi-Fi networks, the researchers examined trees near known Wi-Fi access points during a three-month period. During this period, leaves within 50 to 300 centimeters of a 100 milliwatt, 2412-2472 megahertz radiation source showed "a metallic luster appearance, a discoloration of the leaves that appeared to result in the disappearance of the outer cell layer of the leaves. The metallic luster was followed by desiccation and death of a portion of the leaf."

The study also found slower growth and delayed flowering in corn plants near Wi-Fi access points.

The researchers involved in this study would like to do another study to see if their results can be observed over a longer period of time and at a larger scale, presumably one that would include other locales and proximities to Wi-Fi access points. The full findings are not yet published and will be discussed in detail at a February 2011 conference.

However, some are saying this report — or at least media coverage of the findings — might be a bit too alarmist.

Even the scientists involved in the study noted that their initial findings, while enough to warrant curiosity and more research on the subject, weren't enough to proclaim that Wi-Fi networks are universally bad for trees.

The Dutch Antenna Agency says these abnormalities in the trees at Alphen aan den Rijn might simply be due to disease. It also notes that similar studies conducted on other species of trees have not reported the same negative effects.

So, does Wi-Fi kill trees? The short answer is that we don't know yet. More research needs to (and likely will) be done before anyone can make such a sweeping statement.

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